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The Green Years
The Green Years
8.4
/10
675 Ratings

THE GREEN YEARS

Os Verdes Anos

Directed by Paulo Rocha
Portugal, 1963
Drama, Romance, Cult

Synopsis

19-year-old Julio heads to Lisbon from the provinces and gets a job as a shoemaker for his uncle Raul. But when he meets Ilda, a confident young housemaid who becomes a regular shop visitor, the two begin a tentative romance until the realities of the outside world come crashing through.

Synopsis

19-year-old Julio heads to Lisbon from the provinces and gets a job as a shoemaker for his uncle Raul. But when he meets Ilda, a confident young housemaid who becomes a regular shop visitor, the two begin a tentative romance until the realities of the outside world come crashing through.

Our take

Paulo Rocha’s The Green Years is one of the great Portuguese debuts. Now magnificently restored, this breathtakingly modern, Lisbon-set tale of urban acceleration and romantic turmoil takes the stylistic freshness of the contemporaneous French New Wave and cloaks it with an anguished melancholia.